Does Android Provide Better Parental Controls Than iOS?

By Brad Chacos, LAPTOP Contributor | Sep 20, 2012 11:21 AM EST

When it comes to keeping your child three-finger swiping safely on a phone or tablet, Apple’s “walled garden” may be the first thing that pops to mind. Journalist K.T. Bradford examined the options over at Tecca and came to a somewhat surprising discovery, however: Android is better for kids than iOS.

Why? It’s all about the parental controls. While iOS includes some basic app-blocking and content-filtering options, the protection is largely limited to the software baked into the operating system, like iTunes or Safari. Android doesn’t offer very robust protection out of the box either, but the open-source OS gives developers access to much deeper parts of the operating system than Apple. That’s led to a thriving ecosystem of third-party parental control apps.

Depending on the app, parents often have the ability to hide specific apps from their children, block app downloads, schedule when kids can use their phones (and who can call/text them), monitor activity, customize kid-friendly homescreens and, in the case of NQ Family Guardian, even use GPS to set up “safe zones” and check-ins for your kids that send you notifications when they arrive/leave specific locations.

Some manufacturers are starting to bake multiple user profiles and parental controls directly into their Android installations, as well, as seen with the Kurio 7 Kids Tablet and the new Kindle Fire HD lineup’s FreeTime mode. The Nook Tablet has strong ingrained parental controls, as well.

The most effective garden walls are the ones you build yourself, it seems.

Unfortunately the selection of kids apps is inferior on Android. I know lots of developers aren’t willing to port to Android because for the majority of people who have, it hasn’t been a worthwhile investment. Android users tend to prefer free apps w/ ads, but that really isn’t appropriate for kid apps.